And then there were seven?

Wayne's standing in the doorway to the hall, grinning at the big hairy thing chowing down in the cat food bowl, musing "I wonder if our catfood bill is about to double?"

Up til the other day, we officially had six cats, plus Buddy who visits from time to time when he wants some cat biscuits. You remember Buddy - he's Mum's cat who escaped from here while on compassionate leave (when Mum was in hospital), after pissing on our new bed as a thank you for our hospitality.

Buddy is now mostly feral, preferring to live with the local wild cats down by the dump and chicken farm corner, and only visits when he feels like it. We hear him some nights, and see him even more occasionally, so for a while there when our nocturnal visits increased dramatically we naturally thought it was still just Buddycat.

Well you know what *thought* did ;-)

It turns out the catdoor's banging at night was also down to a ginormous fluffy grey and white monster, with a perfect white ring around his tail.

If he were black instead of steel grey, he could be the stunt double for "Sylvester" of Tweety & Sylvester fame. (Btw .. sidetracking here. I once read a snippet that one of those many psychology tests that abounds includes a question "Who do you privately cheer for? Tweety or Sylvester?" Apparently most people prefer Tweety, but I hate the obnoxious little canary and always barrack for the cat. Wonder what that says about me? Probably that I hope smart-asses get eaten.)

Anyhoo, to the disgust and amazement of our six (who barely tolerate each other on a GOOD day), we have made the new cat welcome and continue to encourage his visits by feeding and petting him. He's obviously dumped (grrr... people!), and despite his massive frame is actually very thin.

But despite his skinniness, he STILL has trouble fitting through the cat door! He has to squeeeeeeeeeeeze one leg through at a time, and it's too cute to see that fluffy grey tail (with ring waving in thanks) as he carefully negotiates not getting stuck.

The incumbent six all look ridiculously puny by comparison; even Greebo (the biggest, baddest and most solid) looks little more than a kitten by comparison. The overall impression seems to be "Holy F........!!!!! Don't get close, he might EAT you and not even notice!"

Luckily Grey Cat seems to be a gentle giant, which is just as well because he's big enough to take down a small mammoth.

Yep - we've checked the Lost & Founds, and the Community Noticeboards, plus left a message at the vet's. We've just said "long haired grey cat" and if anyone does respond, we'll ask them what's so weird about his tail.

If they do own this cat, they'll know immediately what we mean. If not, they'll never guess :-)

Oh yeah.. there's a sign out in cat language that says "for a soft touch and a good meal, go to number..." After all, that's how we got Boots, Adder, Gremlin & Greebo in the first place, and Badger, Bumpkuss and Mako by default (Grem's offspring).

Still, if we all did something nice for a needy animal, maybe it would help to balance those outrageous acts of cruelty by those revolting little snots who set fire to those cats, and got away with a very light tap on the wrist.

Gotta balance out the ledger for humanity somewhere, I reckon.... It's up to all of us.